African American World

African American World . Complete History Timeline and Article Index of Links | PBS:
"1857: In the Dred Scott case, the Supreme Court decides that African Americans are not citizens of the U.S., and that Congress has no power to restrict slavery in any federal territory. This meant that a slave who made it to a free state would still be considered a slave.

Learn more - What Dred Scott Meant for African Americans
http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1137595
From The Tavis Smiley Show, NPR

Learn more - Dred Scott's fight for freedom
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2932.html
From Africans in America, PBS

1859: Harriet Wilson publishes Our Nig; Or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, the first novel by an African American woman. The novel will be republished over a century later by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

1861: The Civil War begins when the Confederates attack Fort Sumter, in Charleston, South Carolina. The war, fought over the issue of slavery, will rage for another four years. The Union's victory will mean the end of slavery in the U.S.

Learn more - The Civil War
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4narr5.html
From Africans in America, PBS

1863: President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation legally frees all slaves in the Confederacy.

Learn more - June-teenth Declared "African American Independence Day"
http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1028889
From Morning Edition, NPR

Learn more - The Emancipation Proclamation
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1549.html
From Africans in America, PBS

1863: The Union's 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first African American regular army regiment, assaults Fort Wagner in Charleston, South Carolina, losing half its men. The event is memorialized in the 1989 movie Glory. By the war's end, nearly 180,000 African American men will have served in the Union army. Some also served in the Confederate army - both freedmen and conscripted slaves.

Learn more - Morgan Freeman Discusses the 54th Mass. Regiment
http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1137653
From The Tavis Smiley Show, NPR

Learn more - African American Soldiers
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lincolns/atwar/es_aaregiments.html
From The Time of the Lincolns, PBS

1863: Eight African American infantry regiments fight on the Union side in the Battle of Port Hudson, attacking heroically despite heavy losses to withering Confederate fire.

Learn more - African American Soldiers
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lincolns/atwar/es_aaregiments.html
From The Time of the Lincolns, PBS

1864: Captured African American Union troops are massacred in cold blood after Confederates take the Union-held Fort Pillow in Tennessee.

Learn more - Discussion of Like Men of War
http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1001336
From Weekend Edition, NPR

Learn more - African American Soldiers
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lincolns/atwar/es_aaregiments.html
From The Time of the Lincolns, PBS

1865: Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery, and establishes the Freedmen's Bureau to assist former slaves. This is the beginning of the Reconstruction era.

Learn more - The Civil War and Emancipation
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2967.html
From Africans in America, PBS

1865: Union Gen. William T. Sherman issues a field order setting aside 40-acre plots of land --"40 acres and a mule" --in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida for African Americans to settle.

1866: All-white legislatures in the former Confederate states pass the so-called "Black Codes," sharply curtailing African Americans' freedom and virtually re-enslaving them.

Building Democracy: 1866-1953

1866: Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, which confers citizenship on African Americans and grants them equal rights with whites.

1866: The white supremacist organization known as the Ku Klux Klan is founded in Tennessee.

Learn more - The KKK
http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1137190
From Weekend Edition, NPR "